Business profile
Making money work for you
WHEN Ray Best talks about running a family business, he doesn’t mean something he inherited from a relative. His business focus is to preserve and protect families by ensuring that their assets are passed to the next generation by providing high quality wills and trust arrangements.
“Our clients work hard accumulating wealth in the first place, so why allow some of that money to be snatched by HMRC or handed on a plate to someone your son or daughter happened to be married to?” he said.
Now, Wills, Tax and Trust Limited, based in Hurst, is one of the most respected names in the business, clients come from far and wide, including clients from Thailand.
Yet life hasn’t been all plain sailing. As a young man in the Royal Air Force Ray received some very poor financial advice, which resulted in him losing money. That provided the motivation to start a new career providing proper financial advice to clients.
“The first thing we do is to get to know our clients, I mean really get to know them. It’s not simply about money; it is creating the right lifestyle for clients to live their life of choice,” he says.
It has been many years since Ray left the RAF, his business has progressed to the stage where he has acquired his own commercial office in Hurst with a staff of five, soon to be extended to eight. He provides a highly professional service, so naturally all client meetings are at his offices.
“From my experience, around 90% of wills are badly written and incorrect. If proper planning is not achieved, you can end up losing 70% of an estate in two generations and 90% in three.”
There are a lot of people who write wills, for the majority it is either a minor part of their legal service, or a part time hobby.
For Wills, Tax and Trust, protecting the family, is its number one priority.
Ray said: “Sadly, we can’t help everyone, a lot of people live in a bubble, safe from the bad things that happen to other people.
“Our clients really care about their families and want to ensure that their dependants receive their assets intact and without paying death tax. So not only do we provide protection, we also advice on Inheritance Tax planning. Useful if you don’t want your estate to be part of the £5.2Bn collected by HMRC in the last financial year.”
And there’s more advice from Ray: “For several years, I have jointly authored a 259 -page book Inheritance Tax Simplified, not the jazziest of titles, but I wanted to make this important topic understandable.
“Why not take some time out to look at your finances and financial needs as well as your plans for the future, you can plan ahead to ensure you leave a happy legacy – not a trail of bitterness and strife caused by ill thought out, inadequate drafted legal documentation.” www.willstaxandtrusts.com